


left my words out in the cold

by sinkingsidewalks



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 19:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16898814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: A cross country drive, a crashed car, and a relationship talk.





	left my words out in the cold

**Author's Note:**

> I floated this idea to Emma a couple weeks ago but she refused to write it and the idea wouldn't leave me alone so now we're here. Huge thank you to Chrissy and Jan for their help, and of course the rest of the Writers' Guild.  
> This is a work of complete fiction.

Tessa gets caught in the halfway point between awake and asleep, only aware that everything in her must hurt, even though she can’t yet feel the pain. There’s only a deep aching cold burrowing through her spine and an overwhelming black weight pressing down on her. 

Scott’s saying her name, is begging her to open her eyes, and while she can hear the panic in his voice, it doesn’t touch her. He feels miles away even though she can feel his hand on her face, touching her temple, and something sticky between his skin and hers. She wants to bat his hand away but her mind isn’t cooperating enough yet for movement. 

Only her fingers are tingling. She considers that a good sign, her hands are always the first thing to regain movement when she’s coming up from anesthesia and even though she’s certain she didn’t have another surgery, the familiarity is at least comforting.

Scott’s voice gets louder, less like an echo of thought in her skull and more like his actual voice next to her. She can feel his hand on her throat, under her jaw, his fingers still slippery then suddenly she can feel her seatbelt across her body, and a crushing weight on her chest that feels like it’s pressing the air out of her lungs. 

The resulting panic of feeling like she’s not breathing shocks her into full consciousness. 

She hears Scott groan with relief beside her as his arm drops away from her, but she still can’t put the pieces together. Her skull aches all the way down her spine and she can barely figure out what her thoughts are before they’re slipping away from her. She’s never had a concussion before but she’s almost certain this is what it feels like. 

Black clouds swim over her vision, testing her consciousness, but she manages to blink them away without slipping off again. When her eyes clear she’s staring through what should be the windshield, but it doesn’t make sense. Instead of rural Saskatchewan there is only bright, white light filtering through without flaw or variation. 

All her lagging brain can think is: _Holy shit, we’re dead._

 

They’re not dead. Yet. The realization comes to her in starts and stops. 

The white light is just sunlight, filtering through snow fallen onto the car, not the calming glow of an afterlife. Her chest isn’t actually being crushed, her lungs work fine, but there’s already a bruise forming from where her seatbelt grabbed her in the crash. The dampness on her skin – and Scott’s hands – is her own blood, running from a cut in her forehead. It’s all very real.

Her biggest piece of evidence is that Scott is still in the driver’s seat next to her. And as much as she’d like to believe that, in whatever happens next, she won’t be alone, she knows that they haven’t exactly earned eternity together over the past few months. She’s not even sure they deserve the rest of this life together. 

But he’s sitting there, plain for her to see, with his head back against the headrest and his chest heaving, each huff of breath creating a shadow of fog in the cold air from his body heat. The expression on his face is of relief. With his eyes closed he looks almost like he could be praying, but she didn’t think he did that anymore. 

“What-“ she winces at the volume of her own voice. Her mouth tastes like metal but she doesn’t think her mouth is bleeding. “What happened?”

The last she remembers they were driving east through Saskatchewan on the TransCanada, resolutely ignoring the elephants in the car. Retirement. Relationships. Some other ungodly reason she agreed to spend almost fifty hours in a car with a man who, among his many titles, _does_ qualify as her ex-boyfriend. 

Scott’s eyes open and they look far clearer than hers feel. “A deer, or something. I swerved, we’re in the ditch.”

“Fuck.” Blood drips into her eye. “Are you okay?”

She thinks she is, mostly at least. The head wound feels superficial, and while she definitely has a concussion, it’s not going to kill her. 

Scott reaches over and presses his already blood soaked sleeve into where her forehead is bleeding. It’s oozing more than actively bleeding but it must make her look like a wreck. She winces but doesn’t take her gaze off him. 

“Mostly.” 

She gives him a look. She knows what he looks like when he’s lying. 

“I think my leg might be broken.” He grimaces. “I don’t like that this is still bleeding.”

Tessa shivers. “It’ll freeze soon enough anyway.”

That’s when it hits her: they’re not dead _yet_ , but they’ll surely die here. 

 

The car is a rental. They picked it up at the airport in Vancouver when all flights into Toronto were cancelled because of the weather, and Scott suggested that driving would give them an opportunity to have all the conversations they’d been putting off. 

The windshield is shattered into spider’s webs but holds solid in the frame. It’s buried in the snow. The car is tilted forward and they really are _in_ the ditch, buried into several days’ worth of fresh snowfall. She can’t see anything at all out any of the windows. 

“How long was I out for?” She asks, the whole vehicle couldn’t have been so thoroughly covered very quickly. 

“A couple hours I think?” He holds up his phone, the screen is cracked and glass is spilling off it. “I was out too for a while.”

“Did you call…?”

He shakes his head. “No service.”

“Fuck.” She takes a deep breath and employs all of her pre-competition _don’t panic_ thoughts. “Well, someone will notice we’re missing, right? I mean, my mom, or yours, or…” It’s petty that she still won’t say his girlfriend’s name, but she’s the first to admit that she does petty well. 

He bites his lip and shakes his head. “I told her we needed a total blackout, to figure things out.”

“Fuck.”

He’s about to say something she doesn’t want to hear. She can see it all over his face. It’s the same look he gets when he finishes her leftovers and vetoes programs she’s already excited about. 

“You should go for help. See if you can flag someone down.”

She stares at him, fresh anger bubbling. She hates that he’s so willing to play the self-sacrifice card, like he somehow deserves it. “I’m not going to leave you here.”

“Tess-“

“No, Scott. That’s not even an option.” Tessa shakes her head and it sends more shadows into her vision. “Besides, we’re in the middle of Saskatchewan, I’d freeze before I got anywhere. We’re better off together.”

“Tess-“ He tries again, then shift and winces, _hard_. His face goes ashen and his hand grips onto the steering wheel, knuckles turning white from the pressure. 

“Breathe,” she reminds – like he has for her so many times in the past – and links their fingers together for him to squeeze on. “We should get your leg elevated, maybe rig up something to immobilize it.” She shivers again. “And get coats out.”

The backseat is mostly empty, except for discarded snacks and Tessa’s purse. Their stuff is all in the trunk, but there should be a hatch in one of the back seats that she can crawl through to get it. 

“You know we’re supposed to strip, right?” Scott jokes, still wheezing slightly from the pain. She glares at him. 

“Hypothermia survival 101,” he continues. “We’ve gotta share body heat.”

“That’ll be a great headline, _Virtue-Moir dating! Caught naked in car!_ ”

“At least make a pun on _Virtue_ , Tess. Come on, I expect better from you.”

She rolls her eyes, focuses hard on not losing to the dizziness, and climbs into the backseat. 

 

It’s quieter than death. There isn’t a whisper of wind, no trace of tires passing on the highway, just deadened snowfall and his breath against the back of her head. She hopes they’re not slowly suffocating. 

They managed to move him – with more swearing and struggling than a botched lift – into the back seat so that he’s leaning against the inside of one door with his injured leg stretched out across the bench seat and propped up on her suitcase. It’s definitely broken, she rolled up his pant leg to check once he was sitting, praying that she hadn’t messed up the set of the bones beyond repair. 

As it is, the smaller bone in his shin is pressing up through muscle and tissue towards the skin. She’d had to swallow back bile when she saw it. 

Now, she’s tucked into his chest, between his legs, with her knees drawn up to her chin so she doesn’t disturb his leg and half the clothes in their suitcases tucked around them. It’s almost warm, but the temperature will only keep dropping as the sun goes down. 

“We should learn to play bridge,” Scott says into her ear. She tells herself she shivers because of the cold. 

“What?”

“Your grandma had a bridge group right? Did she ever try to teach you?”

“I can sorta play hearts.” She’d been terrible, it was too much math; he’d probably be great at it. “What’s the sudden interest in cards?”

He swallows. “In case I can’t skate anymore.”

Tessa’s stomach drops again and nausea rises. “You’re gonna be fine.”

He ignores her completely. “Or golf, maybe we actually get good at golf. Although you might have to drive me around the course.”

“Bowling,” she grits out. “We’ll become world class bowlers.”

His arms snake around her waist under their many layers of clothing and he leans his chin against her shoulder, nose tucked into her hair. She listens to him breathe, the steady rate elevated slightly from the pain, but still as familiar to her as her own. 

“We should probably talk, huh?” 

She almost laughs. “Yeah. I guess we should.” They spend another dozen heartbeats in silence. 

“Do you wanna go first?” 

He sighs. “Are you still angry with me?”

She bristles. “ _That_ felt accusatory.” 

“Sorry, but are you?” This is always their problem with unmediated therapy talks – he cuts straight to the point, she wants to beat around the bush, and they both end up sniping at each other or stone silent.

“I’m… disappointed. With myself, more than with you.”

“Why with yourself?”

She huffs in frustration, because there are still things that she doesn’t want to admit, even to him. “Because, we were supposed to win the Olympics and everything was supposed to be great. And it was, is, but I’m still _me_. It was dumb of me to think that would change.”

“What’s so wrong with being you though? She’s not doing so badly you know, a couple Olympic golds, a successful tour, now home for a real Christmas.”

“Because me isn’t what you _want_.”

She feels him freeze behind her at that. 

“That’s not…”

Tessa stares the door handle opposite from them, fixes her gaze on it and doesn’t allow it to waver. “It’s true, Scott. If it weren’t we’d be engaged.” She shakes her head lightly. “Which I don’t blame on you, or me, it just is.”

He thinks for long enough that she starts to get dizzy again, then says quietly: “I don’t want you to be unhappy.”

She finds his hand and squeezes onto his fingers. “I’m not. I’m really not. I’m just… crashing, I think, finally.” The post-win buzz, the high of it that she rode on for so long, no longer has the momentum to carry her weight. The new year starts in less than a month and it’s not an Olympic season. 

“What about you? Are you still angry with me?” Her voice is small as she asks, and hard as she tries she can’t make it any stronger. There’s still nothing she fears more than damaging them beyond repair. 

“No, Tess. I was never angry with you, just confused.”

“Are you still confused then?”

“A little, but I think I’m getting it.”

 

She can’t feel her feet anymore. The temperature is still dropping. She’s been dozing for what must be hours but there’s no way to tell the passage of time other than the shift in the colour seeping through the snow as the sun sets. Scott keeps waking her up – she has a concussion after all – even though she feels his head dropping into sleep as she naps. 

He squeezes her lightly in his arms and says her name to pull her awake again. She shivers, even tucked up against his chest. 

“You should try to eat something,” Scott says. They’ve still got road trip snacks – chips for him, chocolate for her – but even though it’s past dinner time she’s not hungry. Her stomach is still turning from hitting her head. 

She shakes her head. “I’d just throw it up and we don’t need that. You should though.”

He doesn’t move or ask her to, so she figures he must feel somewhat the same. 

“We should really stay awake.” Tessa says and she feels him nod, even though she’s already slipping back to sleep. “Talk to me?”

“About what?”

“Anything. I don’t care.”

“Have you done Christmas shopping yet?”

She snorts. “Sort of. Why do you want me to do yours?”

He makes a faux wounded sound. “I do fine, thank you.”

“You just get everything off Amazon.”

“There’s nothing wrong with online shopping.” He says, “Hey, should we actually get each other presents this year?”

“Why? Because we’re retired now?” She pauses. “We’re retired, right?” She twists around to look at him. His nose and cheeks are red with cold and he’s got a hat shoved down over his ears and one of her scarves bundled around his neck. 

“Yeah, right?”

“Yeah.” She nods. She’s been almost certain since the music ended in PyeongChang, but rushing any kind of decision after the Games always ended in mistakes. No matter how certain she thinks she is. 

“So, presents?”

She shakes her head. “I think that should stay a weird ‘us’ thing.”

“Good. I like our weird ‘us’ things.”

“Me too.”

She wiggles her fingers in her mittens to get the cold ache out of her joints and tries to move her toes but finds she can’t really. “Hey Scott.”

“Yeah, Tess?”

Tessa swallows around the lump of nerves in her throat. “Do you really love her?”

He leans his forehead against the back of her skull. “Yeah, I think I could.”

“Okay.” She swallows again. “You’re not worried we’re too fucked up? That we’re too ‘us’ to be happy?”

He laughs. “Of course I am. But I don’t think we can change anything about that at this point.”

“That’s true I guess.” She chews on her lower lip and suppresses a shiver. “How cold do you think it is?”

“Outside? Minus fifteen at least, maybe closer to twenty.” He rubs his hands up and down her arms as if it could help.

Her spine slumps. “We’re going to die.”

“Tess, don’t.”

“We are.” Tears prick at the corners of her eyes but she blinks them away. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, buried under what must be a ton of snow now. No one knows where we are or even to be looking for us.”

“It’ll be okay,” he says like he believes it. 

It won’t. But she doesn’t want to fight with him. 

 

“Do you regret it?” He whispers and it jolts her awake again. It’s getting harder and harder to keep from sleeping and she knows that eventually her body will just give up on consciousness. It’s pitch black out beyond the snow and, sitting in the dark, it won’t be long. 

“What?” She asks, it feels garbled, like her tongue is too big for her mouth and her lips are frozen solid.

“Choosing skating, surgery, then surgery again, sticking with me even though I was an asshole?”

“No, never, I couldn’t. Even without the medals, I could never regret choosing you.” It was never about the skating, it was always about him, about them. 

He wakes her again a moment later: “I regret walking away.”

“I know,” she whispers. “But one of us had to.”

“I still wish I didn’t have to hurt you.”

She shrugs, it’s always been inevitable. She doesn’t think anyone could last in a relationship, no matter what kind, for as long as they have without breaking each other’s hearts a few times. It doesn’t mean she cares any less about him. She can hardly begrudge the suffering he’s caused her when she’s caused him the same. 

Her eyes are too heavy to keep open so she lets them fall shut. “I love you.” 

“I love you too.” He kisses the back of her head. 

She wishes she could thank him – for keeping her warm, for twenty-one years – but the pull of sleep is too hard to resist. Her head no longer aches, the bite of the cold slips away. Scott’s chest is almost warm against her back, his hands hold onto hers – mittens against mittens, like they’re little kids in a drafty old rink again – and she can almost forget where they are. 

The red-orange light of the sunrise breaks through the covering of snow and Tessa doesn’t notice as she falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> What happens next is up to you. If you want to yell at me on tumblr I'm @sinkingsidewalks there too.


End file.
